Chelsea suffered a third successive FA Cup final defeat as they were beaten 6-5 on penalties by Liverpool at Wembley Stadium.
Good evening and welcome to live coverage of Thomas Tuchel’s post-match press conference after Chelsea’s FA Cup final defeat Liverpool at Wembley.
In a repeat of the Carabao Cup final back in February, the teams couldn’t be separated across 120 minutes of football and a penalty shootout was required.
Cesar Azpilicueta missed from 12 yards and that enabled Liverpool to be one kick away from glory when Sadio Mane stepped up, but Edouard Mendy produced a fine stop.
So the shootout went into sudden death and after Mason Mount had a spot-kick denied by Alisson in the Liverpool goal, Kostas Tsimikas stepped up, beat Mendy, and condemned the Blues to a third successive FA Cup final defeat.
It was a painful one for Tuchel and his players to take.
We are in position at Tuchel’s post-match press conference here at Wembley and will bring you the German’s thoughts on the defeat, the penalty shootout, and more.
We’ll have a full transcript on the website shortly.
We have everything it takes to win trophies, we proved it by the way.
We have a Club World Cup and a European Super Cup and I don’t feel sorry this was at the beginning of the season and in winter.
We were good in Champions League, strong in both domestic cups, we can produce peak performances and we have the mentality in the club to shape the mentality of the players, but Man City and Liverpool have shown you need this on a consistency.
It depends on what we do in the last two games and where it ends up.
We proved four times this season that we can produce peak performances to compete with them at this kind of level.
All the results were deserved and could’ve gone our way or their way.
The difference for me throughout the season is they can do it Wednesday-Saturday, Wednesday-Saturday.
They arrived with a big squad, everybody but Fabinho, in a good rhythm.
We had many players out and N’Golo with one training session and Mateo playing with an ankle that I didn’t know it was possible to fit into a shoe.
The best way is to be honest, we have two days off and then we need to prepare.
The season has not finished and we have goals to reach in the Premier League.
Ruben doesn’t have a good history and Ross has.
I was pretty impressed from the sideline from both teams, the way they played with quality and commitment to play a final.
We were not thinking about impressing somebody else.
It was clear we would suffer against this team and we managed to stay in the match because of an excellent goalkeeping performance, then we digged in and got better and better and created chances ourselves.
Everyone is in pain, there is no way you play this game without pain.
Kai did not train yesterday because of hamstring problems and he thought if he trained he would injure himself.
We left it until the last test this morning but it was not possible.
Timo was injured and uncomfortable during the warm-up and said he could not play.
Like in the last final, the Carabao Cup, no regrets.
We played 240 minutes of final team against maybe the most dangerous attacking team in the world and it’s 0-0.
We lose on penalties and we are disappointed and sad, but at the same time proud because we showed everything that we need.
I was sure during the match the momentum was on our side but unfortuantely I was not right.
Outstanding, it was an incredible, intense game against Chelsea – they would have deserved it [the win] exactly the same way, like in the Carabao Cup – that’s how small the margins are.
All of these things, missing good chances, overcoming good moments from Chelsea, then having really good moments ourselves.
Then in the penalty shootout, it was nerve-racking, my nails are gone but I really feel for Chelsea – for the second time, 120 minutes and you get nothing, that’s too hard.
Twice we [Liverpool] were lucky in a penalty shoot-out.
It’s another FA Cup final defeat for the Blues and another defeat to Liverpool on penalties in a domestic final.
We’ll get the full post-match thoughts from Thomas Tuchel very shortly.